It’s sad I have to do this but I feel I need to preface the text below with an outline of my (lack of) political affiliation. I have voted in every provincial and federal election since I was 18. Sometimes my vote has gone to the Progressive Conservatives, or Conservatives and sometimes to the Liberals. In past Federal elections I voted Conservative but in the last election I voted Liberal. I try to make an informed decision each election based on the circumstances and I despise the trend towards treating your vote like choosing a sports team that must be supported against all reason and at any cost no matter what because it has become some part of your identity.
I don’t write a lot about politics here, mostly because I don’t want to add another partially informed opinion to the cacophony of people who talk in certainties about things they know little about. In the case of the Canada Summer Jobs Program, I do know a bit about it because I applied for it on behalf of a local organization and I think the lack of critical thinking involved in the current controversy is amazing.
Bear with me as walk through a little thought experiment.
The Canada Summer Jobs Program application required that our organization attest that:
Both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include X rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of A, B, C, D or E, F, G or H or I or J or K.
Obviously I have replaced the examples in the text with placeholders.
Read the above again. What there doesn’t make perfect sense? The Federal government is saying that it will not provide money to organizations that are actively trying to take away rights that are the law of the land.
Let’s try another version:
Both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include freedom of religion rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of hair color, salary, age, disease or disorders, income or favourite sports team or shoe size or IQ or employment status.
Does that seem unreasonable?
Now, let’s look at the word-for-word version in the application:
Both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability or sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.
If this version bothers you and the other versions don’t, think about why. It can only be because you wish one or more of the items used as examples were not the law of the land.
Now, let’s imagine that there is an organization who’s core mandate is to abolish freedom of religion. Fortunately, the wording on the application means that such an organization wouldn’t get Federal funding to pursue this goal. That’s a good thing right? I suspect that the people complaining the most would be the first to complain if an organization trying to take away the right to freedom of religion got Federal funding.
More importantly, the alternative world where the Federal government funds organizations that aim to take away rights that are the law of the land is nonsensical.
In a recent National Post article, Andrew Coyne argues that abortion is not a right in Canada.
Most of that article is conspiratorial click bait but his assertion did cause me to do a little digging. I’m not a legal expert and I openly admit that my research on this was an hour of reading but it seems unlikely, based on past rulings, that the supreme court would accept a complete prohibition on abortions.
From Aborition in Canada (yes, Wikipedia):
The court noted that “[f]orcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations” and that the law “asserts that the woman’s capacity to reproduce is to be subject, not to her own control, but to that of the state” were essentially a breach of the woman’s right to security of the person, which is guaranteed under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
For the purposes of my argument above, I feel it is correct to say that ‘some abortions’ are a right in Canada. For the same reason, I feel it is reasonable for the Federal government to interpret abortion as a right.
If there are any constitutional law experts reading this, I’d love to hear a more knowledgeable opinion.
Incidentally, if you are reading this thinking I’m a 100% anti-abortion zealot, you are wrong. I accept the premise that a late term abortion is a very different thing from an early term one. I can’t imagine having one of my two children terminated late in pregnancy – my stomach churns just thinking about it. That said, I think there is a big leap from not liking something to thinking that I have the right to take it away from someone else.
I highlighted core mandate a few times in the above text. The Canada Summer Jobs 2018 Applicant Guide says:
NOTE: That an organization is affiliated with a religion does not itself constitute ineligibility for this program.
Basically, being affiliated with a religious group that doesn’t believe in abortion isn’t a problem as long as the mission (core mandate) of the organization isn’t to take away rights.
I bet all of this controversy is because a well-meaning bureaucrat thought that by listing examples they could avoid trouble later when funding was denied based on these conditions and the conditions were not explicit in the application.